Digitigrade animation advice

[kitkats]

Hi. I'm learning how to rig and animate digitigrades using the Auto-rig tool, which is working really well for me, but I have a few questions:

1. Should the 'Tip' nulls be parented to the fingers/claws or not?
2. Can the various locked nulls that the AutoRig creates be unlocked and moved to the bottom of the layer stack safely, or should they be left in amongst the artwork layers?
3. The Hand/ Foot controllers that the Auto-Rig creates have a lot of extra features like the foot roll, tiptoe and heel controls - I am used to animating the Rotation parameter of the controller but doing this as well as all the other controls is becoming confusing - there can be different ways of achieving the same pose of the limb, and I don't know which is correct. Is it generally advised to not animate the Rotation parameter? If not, is there any more advanced documentation on how to use the controls? The manual mentions the Training part of the website but it is not live…
4. How is the Shoulder Weight control for front arms supposed to be used? Is it advised that the static artwork is designed with no weight or 'half' weight on the joint (Since it defaults to 50%)? Should one only need to increase the weight parameter when the body is putting weight down into a step, for example, or should it be used with negative values when lifting a foot off the ground too?

Sorry for all the questions - I am learning about animal anatomy and motion at the same time as tools.

[Duduf]

Hi,

Those are good questions!
I'm going to explain how I usually use the tools, but you must keep in mind that AE and Duik are just tools... And you're free to try using them differently than how they were meant to be used

We've planned to make tutorials about character animation too (bipeds and quadrupeds), but it's been delayed since we lack the time to record them...
I'm writing a book about animation (with duik) too, but I don't have time to work on it as much as I wish...

1. Should the 'Tip' nulls be parented to the fingers/claws or not?

If you used the autorig, you shouldn't have to parent anything, everything should have been rigged by the autorig.
In the case you used the autorig on individual limbs instead of the whole character, all you have to parent should be the upper part of each limb (the legs to the hips, the armes to the torso...)

2. Can the various locked nulls that the AutoRig creates be unlocked and moved to the bottom of the layer stack safely, or should they be left in amongst the artwork layers?

Yes, the index in the layer stack is not used by Duik, so each layer can be moved anywhere

3. The Hand/ Foot controllers that the Auto-Rig creates have a lot of extra features like the foot roll, tiptoe and heel controls - I am used to animating the Rotation parameter of the controller but doing this as well as all the other controls is becoming confusing - there can be different ways of achieving the same pose of the limb, and I don't know which is correct. Is it generally advised to not animate the Rotation parameter? If not, is there any more advanced documentation on how to use the controls? The manual mentions the Training part of the website but it is not live…

The rotation is always needed to animate the feet. The other features (foot roll, tiptoe, and heel) are meant to be used only one at a time, and only when the foot is in contact with the floor (or just after and just before). If the foot roll is activated, the two others should be at 0 at that time of the animation. This allows to keep things more "simple", and avoid a lot of problems in the knees and elbows.

4. How is the Shoulder Weight control for front arms supposed to be used? Is it advised that the static artwork is designed with no weight or 'half' weight on the joint (Since it defaults to 50%)? Should one only need to increase the weight parameter when the body is putting weight down into a step, for example, or should it be used with negative values when lifting a foot off the ground too?

The weight control of the shoulders drives how the shoulders move and rotate, based on the movement of the feet. It's meant to be set before animation, not to be animated. You can grab and move the feet to see how the shoudler moves and if it seems natural. That said, you could animate it a little bit if you need to adjust small details, only when the animation is nearly finished.
Another way to animate the shoudlers can be to set the weight to 0% and animate the layer directly by hand.


In any case, you can always deactivate some features (setting the weights to 0, disabling IK's, etc.) to be able to animate things by hand, if you find some part of the rig too complex, or not working as you think they should, especially to achieve extreme poses.

[kitkats]

Thanks Nico, those are very clear and helpful answers.

The other features (foot roll, tiptoe, and heel) are meant to be used only one at a time, and only when the foot is in contact with the floor (or just after and just before). If the foot roll is activated, the two others should be at 0 at that time of the animation.

Do you normally use Heel control before contact, and tiptoe control after contact? That kind of makes sense - to flip the toes up in the air before coming down to the ground, and to get that ballerina-on-points pose very briefly as it leaves the ground?

Here's what I'm working on:


I'd appreciate any comments! (I know it is missing a tail)
It looks like the static artwork I made has foot roll embedded in the angles which I will try to avoid next time. Do you think the shoulder/arm bones are separating too much? It's hard to see this in reference video's because the shoulder blade is inside the dog! Maybe the daschund is not the easiest breed to start with as the legs are so short.